“Yes, but she let out to me the difference between that time and the one of the first offer when dear Felix could not keep back his delight at keeping her; whereas she could not help seeing that she was a burthen on Clement’s soul, between fear of neglecting her and that whirl of parish work, and that St. Wulstan’s Hall was wanted for the girls’ school. Besides, Wilmet persuaded her.” “She did. But it turned out well. The old man worshipped her, and she was very fond of him.” “Oh! very well in a way, but you know better, Lance.” “Well, perhaps he did not begin young enough. He was a good, religious man, but Pro Ecclesia Dei had not been his war-cry from his youth, and he did not understand, and thought it clerical; good, but outside his life. Still, she was happy.” “Petting, Society, Art, travels! I had rather have had our two first years of tiffs than all that sort of happiness.” “Tiffs! I thought we might have gone in for the Dunmow flitch.” “You might! Do you mean that you forget how fractious and nasty and abominable I was, and how many headaches I gave you?” “Only what you had to put up with.” “You don’t recollect that first visit of my father’s, when I was so frightfully cross because you said we must ask the Lambs and Bruces to dinner? You came down in the morning white as a ghost, an owl in its blinkers, and though I know you would rather have died than have uttered a word, no sooner were you off than he fell upon me with, ‘Mrs. Daisy, I give you to understand that you haven’t a husband made of such tough commodity as you are used to at home, and if you worry him you will have to rue it.’” “What an ass I must have looked! Did I really go playing the martyr?” “A very smiling martyr, pretending to be awfully jolly. I believe I requited papa by being very cross.” “At his interfering, eh? No wonder.” “Chiefly to conceal my fright, but I did begin trying not to fly out as I used to do, and I was frightened whenever I did so.” “Poor Daisy! That is why you always seemed to think every headache your fault.” “The final effect--I won’t say cure--was from that book on education which said that a child should never know a cross word or look between father and mother. So you really have forgotten how horrid I could be?” “Or never felt it! But to return to our muttons. I can’t believe otherwise than that Cherry liked her old man, and if their parallel lines did not meet, she never found it out.” “That is true. She liked him and leant on him, and was constantly pleased and amused as well as idolized, but I don’t think the deep places in her heart were stirred. Then there were constraints. He could not stand Angela’s freaks. And his politics--” “He was not so very much advanced.” “Enough not to like the ‘Pursuivant’ to lie about, nor her writing for it, even about art or books; nor did his old bones enjoy the rivers at Vale Leston. Now you will see a rebound.” “Or will she be too tender of him to do what he disliked?”